| 1857 INVESTIGATION:
"This house is located in
the town of Jerusalem. It is
a stone structure, and including the basement, is three stories high, fifty by
100 feet on the ground--built some twenty years ago, with very low ceilings
and without ventilation, and with no provisions for bathing.
It is heated by stoves and fire-places, or rather attempted to be.
The keeper stated that some of the rooms could not be kept warm in some
weather, and that several cases had occurred in the house in which the paupers
had been frost bitten, and that one of those was a lunatic.
Connected with the house is a farm of 123 acres, yielding an annual
revenue of $1.000. Fifteen rooms
are appropriated to the use of the poor, and as many as eighteen are sometimes
placed in a single room. The basement is occupied for dining halls and cooking.
Sixty inmates were found in the house--thirty male and thirty female,
fifteen foreign and forty-five native born, including twelve children.
The sexes are kept separate at night, but not during the day.
The house is in (the) charge of one keeper and his wife, who have the
management of both house and farm, assisted by the paupers.
The superintendent of the poor purchases the needful supplies for the
house, provides and imposes rules regulating the diet, and binds out the
children when places can be procured, and discharges lunatics when cured.
The average number
supported is eighty-six, at a weekly cost of $1.40 each.
The house is supplied with Bibles, and preaching is enjoyed once in
four weeks. The children have
been taught eight months in the house, and were at the time attending the
district school.
The supervisors have
visited the house twice during the last year.
A physician is employed to visit the house twice a week.
There has been one birth and four deaths during the year.
Five of the inmates are lunatics--two
male and three female, none of whom have ever been sent to the State Lunatic
Asylum. They have no special
attendants, nor do they receive any special medical attention, and none have
been cured or improved. One is
kept constantly in a cell.
The modes of
restraining are by the "use of irons" and locking in cells, where one lunatic was frozen. It
is stated as a common occurrence that water is frozen all night in the lodging
rooms in the main building. The
number of idiots is seven--three males and four females, and four who are
blind. During the winter usually
about twenty emigrants are provided for here, and two-thirds of the whole
number who receive aid here are forced to seek and receive it consequent upon
habits of inebriation.
The poor house building
is quite unsuited and insufficient, humanely
to meet the wants of the poor."
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| LOCAL
NOTES:
| Building History Notes
Submitted by: Gary Bogue gbogue@frontiernet.net |
| The house pictured [above], Esperanza, was correctly
listed as being used from the 1920's until the suspension of services
in 1948. However, the poorhouse described in the [1857 Report]
narrative was an earlier one, which I believe was rebuilt once and
which eventually burned.
My 89-year-old mother has lived her entire life on
County House Road in the Town of Jerusalem, so named because it went
by the old County (Poor) House. The road connects the village of Penn
Yan (off Route 364, just NW of the village) with the hamlet of
Guyanoga, North of Branchport, in the Guyanoga Valley. The early
(circa 1790) settlers of the area were mostly followers of Jemima
Wilkinson, the "Universal Public Friend", a charismatic
religious leader from the East, hence the Town name, Jerusalem.
I think the old County House burned when mother was
a child, probably around 1920. Its location is marked by imposing
brick columns flanking the driveway. There is a house on the property,
presumably either the original superintendent's home or a more recent
building. It is my understanding that the building that burned was not
the original but was a later structure built on the same property.
In 1922, Yates County transferred the indigent
population to Esperanza, which was at that time expanded and
modernized to accept the larger number of tenants. The second-story
balcony, which can be seen in the photograph was added at that time.
The former (very large) attached woodshed was rebuilt as the 2-story
wing on the left in the photo.
Esperanza was completed about 1836 by members of the
Rose family. As I recall they were Virginia planters who had moved
north. Their parents also built Rose Hill Mansion, near Geneva, now a
house museum. The stucco covers very thick stone walls. I understand
that the front columns use local trees as a core, surrounded with
brick. The house took about eight years to build, with the assistance
of family slaves and native neighbors (presumably Senecas) who
supplied sand. The slaves were said to have been freed after the house
was finished. The county purchased the house from a Rose descendant.
Since 1948, Esperanza has been a winery, an art
gallery and a B&B, among other things. None has been successful
for long and most of that time Esperanza has been vacant, as it is
now. It is probably the best-known house in the county. Situated on a
hillside overlooking the West Branch of Keuka Lake, it has one of the
most desirable views in the Finger Lakes. |
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